Changeling

THIS STORY IS PUBLISHED IN THE ANTHOLOGY, GRIOTS

CHANGELING --part 1

Lacking beauty, regal will, or imperious bearing, Iyoke the third daughter of Queen Mizaka, was mocked as a cuckoo's egg. Fat and squat, with a round face that smiled too lovingly on everyone, she was deemed a child of some lowly warrior of peasant stock. However, Queen Mizaka's virtue was renowned throughout all the kingdom of Tentuke, and Iyoke was kind and good-natured. So mockery and rumors faded, although they did not entirely die away.

The time came for Queen Mizaka's three daughters to be married, and for Iyoke Prince Hans was chosen. His was a lowly northern kingdom - distant and small, and he was the least of his father's sons. Marriages were also arranged for the other princesses as well. Sembele the beauty --the eldest and whose beauty even the sun blushed to look upon-- was betrothed to Crown Prince Jaejoong of the large eastern kingdom. The middle daughter was Nunu. Not as beautiful as her older sister, nor yet as ugly as the youngest, she was nevertheless a princess. Quiet and reserved, with skin the color of rich earth, she wore her plaited hair like a wreathed crown upon her head. She was promised to Prince Biodun third in line to rule a large southern kingdom. Portraits were exchanged -letters too. Iyoke waited through Winter rains for Spring sun to arrive. Not the world's sun, the soul of the universe, but Hans, her sun, the sun of her heart.

Life renewed itself and Spring flowers bloomed. But love played with hearts. Prince Hans arrived with pomp and retinue, his hair fairer and wilder, his eyes bluer, his smile sweeter than Iyoke had ever imagined. In the palace's richly embroidered ebony halls, he gathered love as farmers gather windfall. He gathered Sembele's love. And because Sembele was beautiful, her hair falling in thick braided rivulets along her shoulders, her skin black as the night, he returned her love to her and cast Iyoke's aside.

Iyoke removed her silken gown and replaced it with the hemp tunic of the common people. All day, many days, she wept in her chambers.

"Plain, I am," she told the wind. "And not like Sembele, lithe, graceful, and regal. "A changeling, they say, of peasant stock with no royal forbears. Yet, Hans loved my simple heart once. See here, his letters. In portrait, he saw my lumpish forms. Yet even then, his gentle words helped bind our souls together. Yet this very soul he saw not when he arrived and his eyes looked on this body. With no painter's skill to aid me, my ugliness turned his love away. Companion Wind, tell my sister, 'Sembele, Dark Beauty, you who are so beautiful, you who have the love of great princes, and can choose from many great and powerful princes, return Iyoke's only love to her."

The wind brought the message to Sembele but returned to Iyoke with no answer.

Meanwhile, Prince Jaejoong --Prince Jaejoong more beautiful than all the men and women of all the kingdoms of the world-- understood the power of love. Rejection had no power to wound his heart, but the insult irked his father. The old king called his allies together. Trade was disrupted, imported goods refused, exports ceased. Queen Mizaka sent appeasing gifts. King Wung Li relented, and the cast-off prince was called from foreign shores. Prince Jaejoong was ordered to attend the wedding of his former betrothed that all the world would know King Wung Li could both punish and forgive.

At Sembele's marriage: scarlets and velvets. Silks, satins and linens. Pearl-decked pillows, alabaster jars of spices and perfumes sent by princes from distant lands. After a marriage feast of seven days, Sembele set sail for her husband's kingdom, her sisters, and her royal parents accompanying her, there to fulfill another seven days of feasting.

The waves roiling, the stars in their height dancing, Jaejoong and Iyoke both being cast off, Prince Jaejoong found Iyoke at the prow of the ship. "Still weeping?" he asked. How joyous and bright of eye he was! "Your tears will overwhelm the sea. Let your sister have Hans' love." He indicated the rolling waves all about. "So strong is Love, as strong as death. Such love your sister has for Hans --I have no doubt it would uphold us if we chose to dance upon the seas."